The biotech industry, led by Monsanto, will soon descend on the
state of Washington to try their best to defeat I-522, a citizens’
ballot initiative to require mandatory labeling of foods that contain
genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. Voters should prepare
themselves for an onslaught of discredited talking points, nonsensical
red herrings, and outright lies designed to convince voters that they
shouldn’t have the right to know what’s in the food they eat.
Topping the biotech industry’s propaganda playlist will no doubt be this
old familiar tune: that requiring retailers to verify non-GMO
ingredients in order to label them will be burdensome and costly, and
the additional cost will be passed on to consumers who are already
struggling to feed their families.
Playing to consumers’ fears of higher food costs makes good strategic
sense, especially in tough economic times. But the argument doesn’t hold
water, say food manufacturers and retailers who already have systems in
place for verifying non-GMO, as well as rBGH-free, trans fat-free,
country of origin and fair trade. The system involves using
chain-of-custody, legally binding affidavits, not expensive testing.
“We have used the affidavit system repeatedly, without undue burden or
cost,” said Trudy Bialic, Director of Public Affairs for Seattle-based
PCC Natural Markets. PCC, the largest consumer-owned natural food retail
co-operative in the United States, uses the affidavit system to ensure
their chocolate isn't made using child slave labor, their dairy products
don't come from animals subjected to rBGH hormones, and that all
seafood was harvested using sustainable sources and practices.
Trader Joe’s, a privately held chain of nearly 400 U.S. stores,
confirmed that the company’s private label products, under the names
Trader Joe’s, Jose’s and Ming’s, are GMO-free, though the company
doesn’t label them as such. In an email, a company spokesperson said:
"
When developing products containing
ingredients likely to come from genetically modified sources, we have
the supplier of the product in question perform the necessary research
to provide documentation that the suspect ingredients are from non-GMO
sources.

This documentation is in the form of affidavits, identity-preserved
certification of seed stock, and third-party lab results from testing of
the ingredients in question."
Trader Joe’s performs random audits of items with suspect ingredients,
using an outside, third-party lab to perform the testing, the company
said. Trader Joe’s system is not unlike that of the USDA, which requires
sworn statements from food producers to certify organic foods. The
agency requires test samples
from approximately 5 percent of products, all of which must be GMO-free
in order to be certified organic. For the other 95 percent, the agency
relies solely on sworn statements.
Clif Bar & Co. also requires affidavits from ingredient suppliers
demonstrating they can meet the company's stringent non-GMO
requirements.
Monsanto would have you believe that verifying and labeling for non-GMO
ingredients is a costly and burdensome affair, but the fact that Trader
Joe’s, known for its discount prices, can provide GMO-free private label
products, which reportedly account for over two-thirds of the company’s
estimated annual $9 billion in sales, takes the wind out of the
“burdensome” argument. That leaves the cost of adding another line of
ink to a label. Trader Joe’s doesn’t yet label its private label
products as GMO- free, but the company cites a lack of clear labeling
guidelines from U.S. governmental agencies as the reason it doesn’t
label, not cost.
Megan Westgate, Executive Director of the Non-GMO Project
confirmed what retailers who use the affidavit system said: "An
affidavit system like what's proposed in I-522 is a powerful way to have
a significant impact on the food supply with minimal cost." How does the affidavit system work?
Companies selling non-GMO foods provide a sworn statement (i.e. an
affidavit) to the retailer that the ingredients used are sourced from
crops that aren’t intentionally genetically engineered. The affidavit,
unless deliberately dishonest, protects the manufacturer and the
retailer from liability in the case of unintentional GMO contamination.
Retailers are responsible only for labeling a few raw commodities that
may contain GE ingredients, such as sweet corn, papaya, or squash. In
these cases, the retailer can either stick a simple label on the bin or
ask their supplier for an affidavit stating that the crop is GMO free.
Under this system, no costly testing for GE ingredients is required. No
burdensome government oversight is necessary. The system is inherently
designed to protect small grocers and retailers, at no additional cost
to the customer or taxpayer.
The beauty of the affidavit system is that it offers retailers and
manufacturers a simple, easy way to comply with a regulatory model that
provides consumers with the right to know what’s in their food without
increasing grocery costs. Even for manufacturers who might otherwise
seek to pass on the trivial expense of relabeling to consumers, empirical studies show
that the fear of losing customers in the competitive food industry will
be a deterrent to raising prices. Did food costs change when we labeled
calorie content?
Is the system reliable? Retailers say yes. Why would manufacturers
intentionally deceive retailers only to open themselves up to a lawsuit
and public relations nightmare? And the system has a proven track
record. PCC Natural Markets, Trader Joe’s and Clif Bar all use
affidavits, as do other manufacturers who use them for country-of-origin
and no-trans fat labeling. And nearly two-thirds of the nation’s
largest dairy processors use sworn affidavits from producers in order to
label rBGH-free. (rBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, is a
synthetic, genetically engineered hormone injected into dairy cows to
increase milk production).
Contrary to claims made by companies like Monsanto, states do have a constitutional right to label food. In fact, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act
explicitly allows states to add language to labels so long as the
federal government doesn’t require language on the same subject – a
right that has consistently held up in federal court.
A chain-of-custody, legally binding affidavit labeling system empowers
consumers to make more informed choices about what we eat, without
increasing the costs of groceries or burdening retailers and
manufacturers. One simple label to identify foods that have been
genetically engineered, often using the genes of foreign bacteria and
viruses, would lead more consumers to seek out sustainable, organic,
non-GMO alternatives. And that – not some phony line about increased
food costs – is why Monsanto is fighting labeling.Zack Kaldveer is assistant media director at the Organic Consumers Association.

Statement of Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch

WASHINGTON - April 10 - “The Obama Administration’s proposed cuts
to the FY 2014 budget for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service
(FSIS) pave the way for an ill-conceived proposal to remove government
inspectors from slaughter facilities and turn over their
responsibilities to company-paid employees. The Obama Administration
proposed a change in regulations on January 27, 2012, to implement this
privatized inspection model and these budget cuts advance this aim
despite hundreds of thousands of comments to the USDA opposing the
proposal. Although the final rule has not been published, the proposed
FY 2014 budget makes the rule a fait accompli.“USDA has been conducting a pilot using this privatized inspection
model since 1999 in 20 chicken and 5 turkey slaughter facilities. The
department has made the argument that the remaining USDA inspectors in
the plants can focus on ‘food safety’ issues leaving ‘quality’ defects
for the company employees to handle. The department’s own analysis
accompanying the January 2012 proposed rule revealed that Salmonella
rates in the plants using the privatized model were higher in pilot
plants when comparably–sized plants receiving conventional inspection.“Food & Water Watch did its own analysis of the inspection
documents from a group of the poultry plants participating in the pilot
and we found that ‘quality defects,’ including visible fecal
contamination, were being missed by company employees (see http://foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/privatized-meat-inspection-ex...).“More alarming is the fact that, of the poultry plants that failed
the most recent round of the FSIS salmonella testing, two are part of
the pilot project – Tyson Foods Establishment P7101 located in
Clarksville, Arkansas, and Golden Rod Broilers Establishment P341
located in Cullman, Alabama. The pilot plants represent a
disproportionate share of the all poultry plants that failed the
salmonella testing. Yet, the Administration is seeing fit to move
forward with an inspection model that may increase food borne illness
and not reduce it (List of failing plants can be found here http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/FSISFailedBroilerPlants.pdf).“When the Obama Administration first proposed expanding this pilot,
it estimated that the FSIS would save $90 million over three years by
eliminating some 800 USDA inspector positions, and the poultry industry
would stand to pad its bottom line to the tune of $260 million per year
since more companies could increase line speeds to 175 birds per minute
under fewer regulatory requirements. The new inspection model also poses
serious threats to worker health.“Congress should reject the Administration’s proposal. Instead, the
Administration should be seeking legislative authority for FSIS to
regulate foodborne pathogens in all meat and poultry plants that fall
under its jurisdiction instead of letting the companies regulate
themselves.”Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we
consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and
trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where
their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing
freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force
government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the
importance of keeping shared resources under public control.

###

Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer
organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We
challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water
resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the
public consciousness about what we eat and drink.

Tory Field is Research and Education Coordinator for Other Worlds.
Tory is an organizer living in Massachusetts. She worked for many years
as a community organizer with Arise for Social Justice, a multi-issue
community justice organization in Springfield, MA. where she now serves
on the Board of Directors.

'Crop Waste': The Price of Perfection

It’s tough not being perfect. Everyone who has ever had a bad hair
day knows that. And that’s no more true than for those misshapen, oddly
sized fruits and vegetables that Mother Nature inevitably produces. For
them, the price of being imperfect is being consigned to a slow death,
rotting in the farm field or the landfill, while their cosmetically
perfect brothers and sisters head off to a grocery store near you.Two fascinating reports from the Natural Resources Defense Council
do a deft job of explaining why we should all care about “crop
waste”—the widespread loss of otherwise edible fresh and vegetables that
never make it past the farm gate or the landfill. One report, Wasted by Dana Gunders, looks at food waste across our food system. The other, Left-Out, looks specifically at fruit and vegetable losses on the farm.Consumer demand for cosmetically perfect produce has real consequences. (Photo: creative commons license/katiescrapbooklady.)The numbers reported by NRDC are astounding. For instance, from farm
to fork, about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States
goes uneaten. That amounts to $165 billion of wasted food every year (a
figure which, notably, is in the same ballpark as the annual cost of
obesity). More than 6 billion pounds of fresh produce go unharvested or
unsold each year, and preliminary data from a cluster of fruit and
vegetable growers in California suggests that losses on the farm and in
the packing stage range as high as 14–60 percent for a variety of common
crops.Why are losses on the farm so high? There are many contributing
factors, but a big one that you and I play a part in is consumer demand
for cosmetic perfection—for perfectly shaped peppers and uniform, bright
red strawberries that seem to get bigger every year. The whole supply
chain, from the farm to the grocery store. is geared toward meeting that
expectation. From apples to zucchini, produce has to fit within very
specific ranges for size, shape, color and other parameters. Some
produce that doesn’t make it goes to a processor for juicing or other
uses, but many of the imperfect fruit and vegetables never make it out
of the field. Other factors contribute to high waste rates as well. Contracting
practices that are common in the produce industry, as well as the threat
of bad weather, pests and price volatility, encourage growers to
overplant. Labor shortages that are exacerbated by the sorry state of
U.S. immigration policy are a factor too. What’s more, when prices at the time of harvest are below the cost of
getting the crop to market, it can make economic sense for farmers to
leave some or all of their production in the field unharvested. Product
specifications are also set by entities with enormous market power—such
as major retail chains—while most of the risk associated with bad
weather, supply gluts that force down prices, and Nature’s imperfections
land in the laps of farmers. And what else is wrong with this picture?Let’s begin with the waste of food itself. As NRDC points out,
reducing overall food waste by just 15 percent would provide enough food
to feed more than 25 million Americans every year. Even though “the
marketplace” may not want the crops that go to waste every day, current
waste levels make no sense when looked at in the context of hunger,
obesity, food justice and the impact of poor health on our economy. Environmentally, crops that don’t make it to market involve
significant uses of water, fertilizer, pesticides and other inputs. For
instance, NRDC estimated that the unsold broccoli grown in just one
county (Monterey County, California) required 2.5 billion gallons of
water to grow (yes, that billions with a “b”, in a state where the water
wars will only intensify as water becomes more scarce). Chemical
fertilizers and pesticides impact farmworkers and the environment
whether the product makes it to market or not. Wasted crops also hold “imbedded carbon.” Carbon is released into the
atmosphere when soil is tilled. Diesel fuel powers farm equipment and
many agricultural chemicals start out life as crude oil. Further, only 3
percent of the food that is wasted between the farm and the fork is
composted. When unsold crops end up in the landfill, they emit methane
gas, a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more powerful than carbon
dioxide.And as noted above, farmers pay the price when they grow a crop only
to plow it under or leave the edible-but-imperfect to rot. Farmer
incomes are adversely impacted even though our fruit and vegetable
producers grow the healthy foods that are needed by an increasingly
unhealthy country. The irony is hard to beat.Fortunately, a number of initiatives hold hope for addressing these issues. For instance, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council
recently put out new food procurement guidelines calling on restaurants
and institutional buyers to “buy lower on the beauty chain” by
purchasing smaller and less aesthetically perfect produce. A commitment
by colleges, schools, hospitals and other institutions to purchase such
“seconds” could make a real difference back on the farm. Several states
in the West provide tax credits to farmers who donate crops to state
food banks (providing a more effective incentive than charitable
donation deductions). The California Association of Food Banks’ Farm to Family
program uses paid, skilled farm labor to harvest unmarketable produce
that is then made available to food banks at greatly discounted prices.
The European Parliament has even set the aggressive goal of reducing
food waste by 50 percent by 2020. These are steps in the right direction, but overall, food waste
largely remains a hidden problem in the U.S., shrouded in a belief that
we can afford to be wasteful and that waste doesn’t have real
consequences. Alas, we all pay the price for perfection.

JoAnne Berkenkamp joined IATP in
2007 to launch and lead IATP’s Local Foods program. The Program works
nationally and locally to build food systems that are scale-appropriate,
transparent, environmentally sustainable and that connect all members
of society with healthy and culturally appropriate foods. IATP’s Local
Foods Program has become nationally known for its pioneering work on
healthy cornerstores, Farm to School, farmers market innovation, value
chain development in large institutional markets, and food systems
policy innovation.Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/09-0

Monsanto Protection Act Put GM Companies Above the Federal Courts

Campaigners say that not even the US government can now stop the sale, planting, harvest or distribution of any GM seed

Monsanto and the US farm biotech industry wield legendary power. A revolving door allows corporate chiefs to switch to top posts in the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies; US embassies around the world pushGM technology onto dissenting countries; government subsidies back corporate research; federal regulators do largely as the industry wants; the companies pay millions of dollars a year to lobby politicians; conservative thinktanks combat any political opposition; the courts enforce corporate patents on seeds; and the consumer is denied labels or information.But even people used to the closeness of the US administration and
food giants like Monsanto have been shocked by the latest demonstration
of the GM industry's political muscle. Little-noticed in Europe or
outside the US, President Barack Obama last week signed off what has
become widely known as "the Monsanto Protection Act", technically the
Farmer Assurance Provision rider in HR 933: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act 2013The key phrases are a mouthful of legal mumbo jumbo but are widely
thought to have been added to the bill by the Missouri republican
senator Roy Blunt who is Monsanto's chief recipient of political funds. For the record, they read:"In the event that a determination of nonregulated status made
pursuant to section 411 of Plant Protection Act is or has been
invalidated or vacated, the secretary of agriculture shall,
notwithstanding any other provision of law upon request by a farmer,
grower, farm operator, or producer, immediately grant temporary
permit(s) or temporary deregulation in part, subject to necessary and
appropriate conditions consistent with section 411(a) or 412c of the
Plant Protection Act, which interim conditions shall authorise the
movement, introduction, continued cultivation, commercialisation and
other specifically enumerated activities and requirements, including
measures designed to mitigate or minimise potential adverse
environmental effects, if any, relevant to the secretary's evaluation of
the petition for nonregulated status, while ensuring that growers or
other users are able to move, plant, cultivate, introduce into commerce
and carry out other authorised activities in a time manner …"According to an array of food and consumer groups, organic farmers,
civil liberty and trade unions and others, this hijacks the
constitution, sets a legal precedent and puts Monsanto and other biotech
companies above the federal courts. It means, they say, that not even
the US government can now stop the sale, planting, harvest or
distribution of any GM seed, even if it is linked to illness or
environmental problems.The backlash has been furious. Senator Barbara Mikulski, chair of the
powerful Senate appropriations committee which was ultimately
responsible for the bill, has apologised. A Food Democracy Now
petition has attracted 250,000 names and sections of the liberal press
and blogosphere are outraged. "This provision is simply an industry ploy
to continue to sell genetically engineered seeds even when a court of
law has found they were approved by US department of agriculture
illegally," says one petition.
"It is unnecessary and an unprecedented attack on US judicial review.
Congress should not be meddling with the judicial review process based
solely on the special interest of a handful of companies."Remarkably, though, it has also offended the Conservative right and libertarians. FreedomWorks,
the conservative thinktank that helped launch the Tea Party, says
corporations should "play by the rules of the free market like everyone
else, instead of hiring insider lobbyists to rewrite the rules for them
in Washington". Dustin Siggins, a blogger for the Tea Party patriots
has called it a "special interest loophole" for friends of Congress.
"We are used to subsidies, which give your tax dollars to companies to
give them advantages over competitors. We are used to special interest
tax loopholes and tax credits, which provide competitive and financial
benefits to those with friends in Congress. And we are familiar with
regulatory burden increases, which often prevent smaller companies from
competing against larger ones because of the cost of compliance. This is
a different kind of special interest giveaway altogether. This is a
situation in which a company is given the ability to ignore court
orders, in what boils down to a deregulation scheme for a particular set
of industries," he writes.Even Monsanto appears a touch embarrassed. The company whose seeds
make up 93% of US soybeans, 88% of cotton and 86% of maize and which on
Wednesday announced a 22% increase in earnings, has sought to align
itself with others in the industry, even though it is far and away the
main beneficiary. In a statement, it says: "As a member of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), we
were pleased to join major grower groups in supporting the Farmer
Assurance Provision, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the
American Seed Trade Association, the American Soybean Association, the
American Sugarbeet Growers Association, the National Corn Growers
Association, the National Cotton Council, and several others."The company's friends are now on the defensive, seeking to blame
"activists". Here is John Entine, director of the Genetic Literacy
Project, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the
pro-business, anti-regulation think tank: "The legislation does not, as
critics allege, allow farmers or Monsanto to sell seeds proven to be
harmful. Rather, it provides legal consistency for farmers and
businesses so that they will not be jerked around by temporary findings
by competing court systems as activist challenges make their way up the
legal food chain."The only good news, say the opponents, is that because the "Monsanto
Protection Act" was part of the much wider spending bill, it will
formally expire in September. The bad news however is that the precedent
has been set and it is unlikely that the world's largest seed company
and the main driver of the divisive GM technology will ever agree to
give up its new legal protection. The company, in effect, now rules.

John Vidal is the Guardian's environment
editor. He joined the paper in 1995 after working for Agence France
Presse, North Wales Newspapers and the Cumberland News. He is the author
of McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial (1998) and has contributed chapters
to books on topics such as the Gulf war, new Europe and developmentSource: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/06-1